For many decades, both American veterans and Vietnamese who lived near former American military bases suspected that their health ailments, such as birth defects in their offspring and cancer, stemmed from exposure to high levels of dioxins in war-era chemical defoliants.

He said: "Between 1962 and 1971, the US military sprayed South Vietnam with approximately 76 million litres of defoliants - including Agent Orange - the Pentagon assuring South Vietnamese residents and its own troops it was harmless to humans.

The base was a key site in the US defoliant program during the Vietnam War, and much of the 80 million litres (21 million gallons) of Agent Orange used during "Operation Ranch Hand" was mixed, stored and loaded onto planes there.

The British invention of concentration camps, employed for slave labour, would be repeated in the Holocaust; indiscriminate bombing and shelling of cities would reach a climax at Hiroshima and Nagasaki and poison gas attacks foreshadowed American use of defoliants in Vietnam.

8 million tons of bombs including napalms and mustard gas, sprayed 75 million litres of defoliants including Dioxin over fields, forests and villages causing 7 million casualties including 3 million dead.

In 1981, in concert with several "Agent Orange" groups and the DAV, we began a campaign to force the VA to recognize the fact that defoliants were used in places other than Vietnam, most extensively, as the Department of the Army willingly admits, in the Korean DMZ area.

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